I come from a server with a rather active pvp (euRO), and I've played from open beta to server closure, most of those 6 years i spent in pvp, along with many others. Without rewards, without tournaments, sometimes without a real character. Just for bragging rights. Everybody knew the various "factions", everybody knew who the best players for every class were, people built characters exclusively for pvp, and most of the time they just went in to hang out and waste the day away.
None of this exists on iRO: pvp is mostly empty, and when it does come alive it still doesn't feel right.
As it is right now, pvp on iRO is a smaller scale woe where everything goes, and exactly like for woe, class 1 beats class 2, class 2 beats class 3 and so on with disregard for a player's personal ability. A simple way to, at least partially, fix this, is enforcing a very simple rule all the players on euRO agreed upon.
That very simple rule was not using any consumable with the exception of aspd potions and green potions.
Regardless of what euRO did, there are multiple reasons that make this appealing, and I will try to list all of them:
1) You are rewarded for doing good and punished for making mistakes. With potions you don't have to pay attention to what you're doing, it doesn't matter how much damage you take as long as it doesn't one shot you: you keep attacking that champion and dodge dozens of his asuras and do hundreds of thousands of damage to them but they only need to land one hit to kill you. There is nothing like that without consumables: walked under a storm gust? You're dead. Missed your asura? Better run.
2) All classes can get kills. This is closely related to point 1. As I mentioned earlier, at the moment, skills that don't one shot you are worthless. Classes with good dps like wizard and sniper are powerless against an opponent at 89% weight. Even together, despite their great synergy. Burst damage is in an even worse state. How many rapid smiting paladins have you seen on this server? Yeah, I thought so. Without potions everything will kill you if you don't play properly.
3) No foods. I feel this needs to be a separate point. Foods don't add anything to pvp, on top of hurting people's wallets, in fact they make it worse: increasing the number of one shot kills and taking pretty much everything away from one of the signature classes of RO pvp (wizard).
In short, foods only increase offense, which is already very high, and leave defense unaltered.
4) Very accessible. Consumables are, well, consumed, meaning that a lot of new players, or players that don't feel like spending a lot of their money on 2 hours tops of action will always stay clear of pvp because they simply cannot compete with players from an established guild that have access to virtually unlimited supplies. I've seen parties of 4 or 5 people use thousands of top 10 slims, blues and hundreds of edps in 1 or 2 hours, that's quite frankly stupid and only adds more burden to whoever has to hunt all that.
5) Promotes builds diversity. When you allow potions you pretty much nullify the need to balance your character around sp consumption and survivability. Example: you can go 1 int on every class that doesn't make use of matk, you just have to carry enough blues.
Those are the points that I think are objective. Now I will procede to rant a little on the state of iRO pvp, without any hate for those people that actually do go. This is my opinion and no one else's.
In all honesty the level of iRO is beyond bad, everybody is spoiled by unlimited supplies, ease of making a new character, so instead of getting good they make a sinx, load it till 89% and start speed potting around izlude. Or a champion. The few people that do play other classes don't have the slightest clue, I see 99 high wizard that can't phen switch, priests that don't hotkey stat recovery, snipers that don't get traps because "they don't need them". I even seen int stalkers get kills, are you kidding me? That was obsolete in 2005. Literally 2 weeks after rebirth arrived (hint: they can't change their element). People wear deadly when there isn't a single mage class in the room. Jesus christ, i killed a sinx with res once and it was just me and him in the room.
This game has a lot of potential and it's very rewarding as well as fun if you play it right, but people here are always looking for the gayest to exploit. I feel like removing consumables would go a long way for improving the overall level of the server. And since everybody seems so hellbent on woe, remember, if you're good at pvp you're amazing at woe.
Now that I vented a little bit of my inner rage, I will show you a comparison between euRO and iRO, aka no consumables vs consumables.
This is iRO:
This is a very good argument for point 1. All those champions are completely disregarding what happens around them. They just hold mouse 1 and fire off endless asuras. It doesn't matter if they hit or not. They have infinite. They take hundreds of thousands of damage but it doesn't matter, they just have to land that one 10k hit.
This is euRO:
I think the difference is pretty obvious, if anything because the rooms actually have people inside.
To put an end to this, my suggestion would be having at least one room (old payon or izlude) where you lose all your buffs upon entering and consumables cannot be used, with the execption of aspd potions (concentration, awakening and berserk) and green potions. This will improve the level of the server and possibly increase pvp activity.
No, I didn't have anything else to do.